Mother Jones illustration; Erin Hooley/AP
The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.
Dean Phillips is a Democratic congressman from Minnesota. He is quite rich and seems to have been an average-to-good representative in Congress. None of that matters for the purpose of this post.
What I care about is not Phillips the man, but Phillips the deed. In 2024, when everyone around President Joe Biden said he was capable of winning a second term, despite his bad poll numbers and obvious oldness, Phillips stood up and said: Come on. He was the only elected official to challenge Biden in the Democratic primary.
In doing so, Phillips mounted a presidential campaign unlike any I’ve seen. He repeatedly made clear that he’d wanted and had tried to get much higher-profile and more electable Democrats to run. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer ignored his calls, he said. After failing as a recruiter, he threw in his own name.
It was a protest campaign made not in opposition to a specific policy or seeming out of selfishness, but an act against stupidity on the part of the president and his inner circle. Phillips was in the race to say: This is nonsense. We’re running an obviously declining octogenarian who the vast majority of Democrats, independents, and Republicans don’t want to see in office for a second term. And we’re doing so in an election in which we are planning to make protecting democracy the central theme.
“If Democrats do not listen right now, I’m afraid the consequences will be another Trump administration.”
“I don’t know how one can dismiss what we’re hearing, what we’re seeing, what we’re sensing, and what we’re reading. And it all points to the same thing,” Phillips told CNN of Biden’s standing. “If Democrats do not listen right now, I’m afraid the consequences will be another Trump administration.”
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Phillips stressed that he saw Biden as “a man of good character and competency who is in decline, who is at a stage in life where human beings are no longer able generally to accommodate the demands of any job, let alone the most demanding job in the world.” He described his campaign as an “intervention for a party that has become addicted to a delusion.”
Predictably, his campaign went nowhere. Even in his home state of Minnesota, he lost badly not only to Biden, but to the “uncommitted” ballot line. He ended up with four delegates—one more than Jason Palmer, the nonentity who heroically prevailed over Biden in American Samoa’s primary. Palmer, who had never been to American Samoa before, was described by the Associated Press as a Baltimore resident who had “worked for various businesses and nonprofits.” He was essentially a guy on LinkedIn. Nevertheless, Palmer defeated Biden 51-40 in the territory’s primary. (That’s a vote total—not a percentage.) Unfortunately, Palmer and Phillips’ combined seven delegates could not quite match the 3,861 pledged to Biden.
Along the way, fellow Democrats went out of their way to take down Phillips. Future vice presidential nominee and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz attacked people in his state for doing “crazy things” and turning themselves into “political sideshows.” Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) called Phillips a “total joke” who had “torched his reputation.” An Axios headline declared that “Dean Phillips’ standing on Capitol Hill has all but collapsed.” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) argued, “He seems to be taking a page out of the Trump playbook.” She added, “It makes me wonder…if he’s a real Democrat.”
Particularly with the benefit of hindsight, these were morbid symptoms. The Democratic Party was being held hostage by a president who ended up not being able to survive more than a few minutes on a debate stage without his entire campaign imploding. Instead of trying to do something about it, the party paid the ransom. It cost Democrats the election they said was more important than any other. Defending democracy only went as far, for many Democrats, as ensuring their reputation and future within the party. Whatever they said about Donald Trump ending democracy, many clearly believed there would indeed be an election to run in 2028.
Phillips, on the other hand, got his obituary. No matter what happens from here on out, he’ll always be the one who tried.